Becoming No One: Rereading Arya IV

[Ragnorak]

As far as Jaquen goes, I have this notion that by presenting the key to tthe Alchemist and proclaiming himself a thief, he both expressed a desire to leave his former life behind making a tangible commitment towards that end and made a sacrifice to the Many Faced God. Then of course Jaqen granted him his wish but not in any way that Pate expected, noting also that Jaqen had a a very passive role, making Pate work for the golden dragon.

<snip>

I like the military discipline analogy. "Advancement" is probably a better word than "promotion" for my meaning. Advancing to the next grade in school is the specific analogy that came to mind. Very nice catch on the servant's robes. When she first arrived she noted it was an acolyte tending the candles.

Though the youngest acolyte was blind, he had charge of the candles.

It nags at me that she doesn't have an internal thought on a change of robes. With her constant fear of being sent away it ought to register. The servant garb she was first given is described as:

Arya was given servant’s garb: a tunic of undyed wool, baggy breeches, linen smallclothes, cloth slippers for her feet.

The difference between acolytes and the waif/Kindly Man is described as:

The acolytes wore black and white too, but their robes had no cowls, and were black on the left side and white on the right. With the kindly man and the waif, it was the opposite.

After giving up her possessions she gets a novice robe.

“Yes,” she said, and from that moment she was a novice in the House of Black and White. Her servant’s garb was taken away, and she was given a robe to wear, a robe of black and white as buttery soft as the old red blanket she’d once had at Winterfell. Beneath it she wore smallclothes of fine white linen, and a black undertunic that hung down past her knees.

She'll get her acolyte robe next chapter after she successfully performs her first assigned kill. Nothing was mentioned one way or the other about black and white socks to the best of my recollection. The garb could be a demotion, but if becoming an acolyte after one's first successful kill is standard practice that would mean Arya advanced in the training program as if Daeron was her first successful assigned kill-- assuming the acolyte attending the candles made a kill, was promoted to acolyte, and then was made blind. I still don't know what to make of it largely because I'm still unsure of the underlying rules about killing. That said, the servant's garb thing is still a very nice catch!

So supposedly killing someone you know is verboten. What constitutes "knowing" someone? For Arya would those people she "knows" as Cat of the Canals count or only people she knew as Arya Stark? I would imagine that it comes down to whether or not there is an emotional connection in the knowing that would make the killing personal that would cover all the identities a FM had over time but that isn't made clear one way or the other.

The thief thing also seems important. It will come up when Arya brings back the coin after her kill and the Kindly Men specifies that they are not thieves. Along that line they view themselves as giving a gift of death rather than taking a life. Some of Pate's recollection's about the Alchemist are interesting:

“Who are you?” Pate had demanded of him, and the man had replied, “An alchemist. I can change iron into gold.” And then the coin was in his hand, dancing across his knuckles, the soft yellow gold shining in the candlelight. On one side was a three-headed dragon, on the other the head of some dead king. Gold for iron, Pate remembered, you won’t do better. Do you want her? Do you love her? “I am no thief,” he had told the man who called himself the alchemist, “I am a novice of the Citadel.” The alchemist had bowed his head, and said, “If you should reconsider, I shall return here three days hence, with my dragon.”

Pate is killed in the same manner Arya kills her first target. Arya is a novice at the House of Black and White while Pate is a novice at the Citadel. The Alchemist turning iron into gold is well done. The alchemy angle is a nice play on the iron key for the gold dragon as well as the payment of the iron coin of the Faceless Men with the gold one. The idea of using the role of the magical alchemist to infiltrate the anti-magical Citadel has some poetic justice to it as well. Amidst the variety of symbolism in that prologue the notion of being a thief stands out.

“Have you decided what you are?”

Must he make me say it? “I suppose I am a thief.”

“I thought you might be.”

He makes him say it. There's also the contrast between Who are you? and What are you? in their questions to each other.

“Do you have my dragon?” he asked the alchemist.

“If you have what I require.”

“Give it here. I want to see.” Pate did not intend to let himself be cheated.

Pate ponders at what point he becomes a thief. It seems that the moment is when he hands over the key-- or at least that is the moment the man formerly known as Jaquen will seal his fate. As they go to a more secluded place to make the exchange they pass through the old Thieves Market. Even Arya's three deaths seem at least in part connected with the idea that three lives were stolen from the Red God.

This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places.

“Three lives were snatched from a god. Three lives must be repaid. The gods are not mocked.”

Thief and stolen aren't explicitly used but "took" and "snatched" carry that implication.

It was not a face Pate recognized. “I do not know you.”

“Nor I you.”

“Who are you?”

“A stranger. No one. Truly.”

“What’s happening?” he said. His legs had turned to water. “I don’t understand.”

“And never will,” a voice said sadly.

This exchange makes it pretty clear he's a Faceless Man, but also seems to indicate there is something more to this exchange to understand. There seem to be some items that are clearly clues but I'm not sure how they fit together. Arya has some strong life parallels to the FM origin and seems to instinctively use Valar Morghulis appropriately. There's something surrounding these elusive rules and the parallels between Pate's fate and Arya's story including killing Daeron that makes me think there's more to this.

[The Sleeper]

Jaqen's behavior in comparison to what the FM are teaching Arya can drive a person nuts. Jaqen makes Pate name himself a thief, yet the KOM tells Arya that they are not supposed to judge people. I think one of the things that might be in the right direction is the fact that Jaqen treated the three lives not as him repaying a debt to Arya, but like Arya repaying a debt to him of many faces. As is repeated often in the series only death may pay for life. Likewise the coin given might not be a token of something owed to Arya, but of something Arya's owes. Then again, as she caused a lot of death with her third wish she might have gotten store credit. Interestingly though, Arya in this event did precisely the thing the KOM berates for; she took on the god's powers onto herself and chose who lived and who died.

I think it is also of interest that Jaqen as the alchemist practically did nothing, but dangle the gold coin in front of Pate. It is a very subtle manipulation, but in a sense it was Pate who took all the steps that led to his death. He even got Pate to pass judgement on himself, therefor satisfying the clause that it was not Jaqen who decided that Pate should die, but Pate himself asking for the gift. The best I can come up with is that Pate prayed and made sacrifice for release from his previous life and Jaqen obliged. I'm not particularly happy with it, myself.

We need to know more about how they decide who get's the gift and what sacrifice is required.

[ShadowCat Rivers]

I suppose that, since Jaquen obviously has a mission bigger than just giving the gift to someone, he may have something like a 007 "licence to kill" (which sounds funny given what they normally do). Acolytes and junior FM would have to stay strictly by the book, I'd think.

Jaquen, being a responsible servant of the many-faced god is carefull not to abuse this licence, both with Pate and Arya's three kills (although he fails in the later, manipulated by Arya to kill much more than three).

[Pod The Impaler]

I would tend to agree. I do not think Jaqen "judged" pate in any moral sense. He may have judged / guessed that Pate was a good "mark" to get him what he wanted, but I don't think there was anything personal about it. He did not like or dislike Pate - Pate was just a means to an end and his elimination of Pate was a not an actual contract killing, nor a religious sacrifice.

The FM training of Arya shows two things clearly:

- They do not kill in passion, hence the lesson about judgement. They do not kill for emotional / moralistic reasons, nor in judgment of whether a person is good or bad. (As Will Munny said in Unforgiven "Deserve's got nothing to do with it".)

- They do not kill gratuitously. As much as the MFG is the god of death, they do not just rack up the corpses of everyone they come across. They kill only those they must, either as a mark or those they must eliminate by necessity to complete their mission.

The FM impart the power to kill, but they do not just churn out puffed-up killers, because that would be a disaster (and in religious terms, a sort of desecration of the gift). Their recruits must learn touse an immense amount of discretion and discipline, and an ethical code that the recruit does not give the gift for their own personal reasons.

[Fire Eater]

Very interesting :) Could the young man with the unlined face be foreshadowing for Jon's "death", and specifically Jon as King?

I don't think so, Jon doesn't have curly hair.

Another thing I found are the parallels with Davos

chopping onions, she cut her finger down to the bone

Davos is the onion knight who had the ends of his fingers on one hand cut off with the bones in a bag

The Lyseni she sees are from Saan's fleet. Arya states what she learns from the Inn of the Green Eel while Davos learns info from the Lazy Eel.

His garb was plain as well . . . a woolen mantle of undyed wool

Her servant's garb was where she hung it a long tunic of undyed wool

[Odon]

The Inn of the Green Eel was where Dareon was going when Arya cut his throat. I can't help wondering if that's some black humor by GRR, as he ends up feeding the eels anyway when Arya dumps him in the canal.

[Blisscraft]

This chapter reveals, perhaps more than any other Arya chapter, the "split" in her psyche. As Lummel noted above, the chapter basically begins and ends with Arya's thought, "so beautiful." In the beginning of the chapter "beauty" is found during night in her wolf dreams. "Beauty" is in the darkness. At the end of the chapter, "beauty" is now in light, the light from the tallow candle. It seems that until Arya can reconcile what is "dark" within her with what is "light", she will forever be spilt in two. Maybe this is why Martin places her in a temple called the House of Black and White. It represents both darkness and light reconciled. It shows that regardless of how one lives one's life, what awaits each one is death. Death in neither moral nor immoral. Death awaits the innocent and the guilty.

[ShadowCat Rivers]

This chapter reveals, perhaps more than any other Arya chapter, the "split" in her psyche. As Lummel noted above, the chapter basically begins and ends with Arya's thought, "so beautiful." In the beginning of the chapter "beauty" is found during night in her wolf dreams. "Beauty" is in the darkness. At the end of the chapter, "beauty" is now in light, the light from the tallow candle. It seems that until Arya can reconcile what is "dark" within her with what is "light", she will forever be spilt in two. Maybe this is why Martin places her in a temple called the House of Black and White. It represents both darkness and light reconciled. It shows that regardless of how one lives one's life, what awaits each one is death. Death in neither moral nor immoral. Death awaits the innocent and the guilty.

I think that both in the begining and in the end, she finds beauty in the light, never in the darkness. There is no split IMO, not in this, at least. During the night she is a wolf, and wolves have a wonderful night vision. Night for her does not equal darkness.

In the beginning of the chapter, she contrasts the lights of the night to the darkness of the day:

Her nights were lit by distant stars and the shimmer of moonlight on snow, but every dawn she woke to darkness.

Furthermore, when she thinks "not for me" about the terrors of the night, she goes on explaining that "Her nights were bathed in moonlight".

She is given three alternatives to the question of how long she will have to be blind:

1. until darkness is as sweet to you as light

2. until you see the way (that "we kill men, but we do not presume to judge them")

3. until you ask us for your eyes (but she'd have to leave)

The first could represent a sort of reconciliation between darkness and light (though I don't really get what you mean by that).

But given that 2 and 3 are out of the question for her, I think it is telling that she "cheats" her way out of blindness, never finding any kind of beauty in the darkness it imposed. Her psychosomatic reactions to the smell and taste of the blinding potion are also telling of what she feels about darkness.

[Blisscraft]

"Split" is a Jungian term. I mean it in that sense.

[Milady of York]

Cbapters between The Blind Girl and The Ugly Little Girl

Jon X

During the marriage of Alys Karstark to Sigorn of Thenn, the Lord Commander remembers his little sister:

Jon turned to Alys Karstark. “My lady. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“You’re not scared?”

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart. “Let him be scared of me.” The snowflakes were melting on her cheeks, but her hair was wrapped in a swirl of lace that Satin had found somewhere, and the snow had begun to collect there, giving her a frosty crown. Her cheeks were flushed and red, and her eyes sparkled.

“Winter’s lady.” Jon squeezed her hand.

And later, speaking with Melisandre after the wedding about whether she can see Stannis or Mance in her fires, Jon reproachfully reminds the priestess about leading him to think it’d be Arya Stark who’d arrive at the Wall:

“I am seeing skulls. And you. I see your face every time I look into the flames. The danger that I warned you of grows very close now.”

“Daggers in the dark. I know. You will forgive my doubts, my lady.

A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from a marriage,

that was what you said.”

“I was not wrong.”

“You were not right. Alys is not Arya.”

“The vision was a true one. It was my reading that was false. I am as mortal as you, Jon Snow. All mortals err.”

“Even lord commanders.” Mance Rayder and his spearwives had not returned, and Jon could not help but wonder whether the red woman had lied of a purpose.

Is she playing her own game?

Theon IV

Whilst deciding to help Jeyne Poole escape Ramsay, Theon briefly remembers Arya’s eyes, so different from this girl’s:

We are all dead,

Theon thought.

I told them this was folly, but none of them would listen.

Abel had doomed them. All singers were half-mad. In songs, the hero always saved the maiden from the monster’s castle, but life was not a song, no more than Jeyne was Arya Stark.

Her eyes are the wrong color. And there are no heroes here, only whores.

Even so, he knelt beside her, pulled down the furs, touched her cheek. “You know me. I’m Theon, you remember. I know you too. I know your name.”

Jon XI

On top of the wall, Jon Snow prays silently for his sister and for Mance to return safe with her:

Jon walked to the edge of the Wall and gazed down upon the killing ground where Mance Rayder’s host had died. He wondered where Mance was now.

Did he ever find you, little sister? Or were you just a ploy he used so I would set him free?

It had been so long since he had last seen Arya. What would she look like now? Would he even know her?

Arya Underfoot. Her face was always dirty.

Would she still have that little sword he’d had Mikken forge for her?

Stick them with the pointy end,

he’d told her. Wisdom for her wedding night if half of what he heard of Ramsay Snow was true.

Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl.

Jon XII

Jon observes some men of free folk playing with snowballs in the Wall, which brings back memories of similar scenes with his siblings:

Outside the old Flint Barracks, he came across a dozen men pelting one another with snow. Playing, Jon thought in astonishment, grown men playing like children, throwing snowballs the way Bran and Arya once did, and Robb and me before them.

Mentions after The Ugly Little Girl

Jon XIII

Whilst deciding whether to go to Winterfell to meet Ramsay Snow in response to the letter the latter sent, Jon has Arya in his mind:

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.

The Night’s Watch takes no part.

He closed his fist and opened it again.

What you propose is nothing less than treason.

He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair.

Kill the boy and let the man be born.

He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.

He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest.

I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

And again when he sees the giant Wun Wun tearing a Baratheon man to pieces:

The screaming had stopped by the time they came to Hardin’s Tower, but Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun was still roaring. The giant was dangling a bloody corpse by one leg, the same way Arya used to dangle her doll when she was small, swinging it like a morningstar when menaced by vegetables. Arya never tore her dolls to pieces, though. The dead man’s sword arm was yards away, the snow beneath it turning red.

ADWD: The Ugly Little Girl

Summary

The chapter begins a night when there’s a gathering of Faceless Men at the House of Black and White, eleven of them have come, and Arya and another acolyte are acting as cupbearers, serving water and red wine. One of the priests, wearing a face of a plague victim, interrogates Arya about who she is and why she’s there.

“To serve. To learn. To change my face.”

“First change your heart. The gift of the Many-Faced God is not a child’s plaything. You would kill for your own purposes, for your own pleasures. Do you deny it?”

She denies it, but since she’s not mastered the art of lying yet, she doesn’t convince the man, who sees through her and slaps her.

“

You lie. I can see the truth in your eyes. You have the eyes of a wolf and a taste for blood.”

Then he tells her that they can send her back to her former life as Cat of the Canals, selling shellfish across the city, and she only has to say the word for it to be a reality. Arya interprets it as an intention to send her away and protests telling the man that contrary to his belief on her being “too soft,” she has no heart and is a killer with many victims to her name, and that he could add him to the pile. He lectures her on the purpose of the Faceless Men’s existence, which is not to kill in the service of lords, for coin or for vanity but to serve the God of Many Faces, and that she’s unsuited for the job precisely because he thinks she lacks the necessary qualities of a servant, humility and obedience. Arya contradicts him once more, and he tells her no doubt she can have that but there’s a price to be paid:

“The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.”

Arya goes over the names she’s had since her escape, leaving some such as Nan and Salty out, and thinks they don’t mean anything:

“I can pay the price. Give me a face.”

She must earn this knowledge, though, and it requires for her to commit an assassination the Faceless Men have been asked to give the gift to, someone she doesn’t know and therefore stirs no positive nor negative emotions in her. “Will you kill him?” the priest asks Arya, and she accepts without hesitations.

Next day, she’s back to her Cat of the Canals persona, to live with and work for the fish seller Brusco, to observe and gather information on the person she must assassinate, whom she soon meets in the street.

He was an old man, well past fifty.

He has lived too long

, she tried to tell herself.

Why should he have so many years when my father had so few?

But Cat of the Canals had no father, so she kept that thought to herself.

She tries to charm him with a smile into buying some cockles or mussels, but is disappointed:

The old man did not smile back. He scowled at her and went on past, sloshing through a puddle. The splash wet her feet.

He has no courtesy,

she thought, watching him go.

His face is hard and mean

. The old man’s nose was pinched and sharp, his lips thin, his eyes small and close-set. His hair had gone to grey, but the little pointed beard at the end of his chin was still black. Cat thought it must be dyed and wondered why he had not dyed his hair as well. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, giving him a crooked cast.

“He is an evil man,” she announced that evening when she returned to the House of Black and White. “His lips are cruel, his eyes are mean, and he has a villain’s beard.”

The Kindly Man reiterates that it’s not her place to judge him, and that the god they serve doesn’t either, for he gives the gift to good people and evil-doers alike. However, Arya still continues to judge his behaviour and find him wanting:

The old man’s hands were the worst thing about him, Cat decided the next day, as she watched him from behind her barrow. His fingers were long and bony, always moving, scratching at his beard, tugging at an ear, drumming on a table, twitching, twitching, twitching.

He has hands like two white spiders.

The more she watched his hands, the more she came to hate them.

“He moves his hands too much,” she told them at the temple. “He must be full of fear. The gift will bring him peace.”

Again, the Kindly Man clarifies to her that this gift brings all people peace, and advises her that the man shouldn’t even notice her. After days of observation at a distance, Arya concludes that the intended victim is a merchant that deals with insurance for goods transported by ship. She pays attention especially to how he handles the money people deposit on his table:

The old man would count it out carefully, sorting the coins and stacking them up neatly, like with like. He never looked at the coins. Instead he bit them, always on the left side of his mouth, where he still had all his teeth. From time to time he’d spin one on the table and listen to the sound it made when it came clattering to a stop.

And when all the coins had been counted and tasted, the old man would scrawl upon a parchment, stamp it with his seal, and give it to the captain. Else he’d shake his head and shove the coins back across the table.

Later, the Kindly Man explains to her what a binder is: a written promise to pay to the captains and merchants for the ships and merchandise lost at sea by whatever causes, remarking that to give them that written contract and be true to it don’t always go together, which is a hint that Arya takes to mean that one of the seamen or merchants he didn’t pay must’ve gone to the temple to pray for his death. The Kindly Man guesses what is in her mind, and after the usual lecture on being No One, he offers to assign the task to another person. But Arya insists that she would do it as she’d said she would.

The next step is to devise the method of killing, difficult in appearance due to the two bodyguards the man has following him everywhere, as well as the precautions he takes to avoid poisoning by onion soup. Arya’s plan is to murder his two guards first and the ship insurance seller second, and she confidently reveals to the Kindly Man how she believes it must be done, but he disapproves:

“Are you some butcher of the battlefield, hacking down every man who stands in your way?”

“No.”

“I would hope not. You are a servant of the Many-Faced God, and we who serve Him of Many Faces give his gift only to those who have been marked and chosen.”

Therefore the girl has to find another way to kill only the man, and starts practising a trick with her dagger. After a while, she announces to the Kindly Man that she’s going to kill the other man without telling him how. She’s told that since her identity as Cat is recognisable and Brusco and his girls might get into trouble is she’s recognised, she must have a new face. Arya is pleased:

“What will I look like?”

“Ugly. Women will look away when they see you. Children will stare and point. Strong men will pity you, and some may shed a tear. No one who sees you will soon forget you. Come.”

He takes her to the third level where only the priests of the Faceless Men can set a foot on, the place where there were “a thousand faces” on the walls, faces of all ages from elderly ones to babies, of every skin colour, with flawless skin and with imperfections, comely and homely, of every gender and every possible facial expression. The Kindly man asks her if she is afraid of these skins, and again tells her that she still can leave the House of Black and White if she wants. But…

She did not know what she wanted.

If I leave, where will I go?

She had washed and stripped a hundred corpses, dead things did not frighten her. They carry them down here and slice their faces off, so what? She was the night wolf, no scraps of skin could frighten her.

Leather hoods, that’s all they are, they cannot hurt me.

“Do it,” she blurted out.

She is taken to an adjoining passage, and orders her to sit unmoving so he can change her face, warning her that it’ll hurt but that’s the price of power. Arya describes how the process feels like to her:

The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered.

“Bring me the face,” said the kindly man. The waif made no answer, but she could hear her slippers whispering over the stone floor. To the girl he said, “Drink this,” and pressed a cup into her hand. She drank it down at once. It was very tart, like biting into a lemon.

…

She felt his fingers brushing back her hair. “Stay still. This will feel queer. You may be dizzy, but you must not move.”

Then came a tug and a soft rustling as the new face was pulled down over the old. The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it softened and turned supple. Her cheeks grew warm, flushed. She could feel her heart fluttering beneath her breast, and for one long moment she could not catch her breath. Hands closed around her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage.

…

The girl took a deep shuddering breath, and realized it was true. No one was choking her, no one was hitting her. Even so, her hand was shaking as she raised it to her face. Flakes of dried blood crumbled at the touch of her fingertips, black in the lantern light. She felt her cheeks, touched her eyes, traced the line of her jaw. “My face is still the same.”

Yet it’s not the same face however it may feel to her, as the Waif lets her know; it’s a ruined face, the shattered face of a girl abused by her sire, so it’s probable that her nightmares become her own. That night, the Ugly Little Girl dreams of the faces of her father, her mother and her brothers; and also dreams of the men she has killed: Dareon, the stableboy at the Red Keep, the squire that was with Gregor’s men at the inn, and the guard from Harrenhal, and only the face of the Tickler causes her to reach for her dagger because of the malice she sees in it.

The following day, the Ugly Girl goes early into the streets of Braavos, walking leisurely to find the man she must kill as she remembers her acquaintances on her way to the Purple Harbour: Brusco and his daughter, the Sailor’s Wife, etc., and only finds Tagganaro, his new cutpurse and his seal, which recognises her under the new face. Then she goes to wait outside the soup shop where the old man is doing business as usual, awaiting the opportunity to strike him dead. That comes with a lame shipowner with a pouch full of gold, and Arya creates a distraction that enables her to complete her task successfully: she approaches the man from behind as he’s about to enter to pay the insurance man, cuts his purse, grabs a fistful of golden dragons from it, spills them all on the floor at his feet, kicks him on the lame leg as he’s about to beat her, and runs to take refuge in a storeroom until she can return safely to the temple.

It’s when she reports to the Kindly Man when we understand exactly what Arya did, and how it is that she killed the old man she was told to:

The ugly girl sat next to him and put a coin on the lip of the pool between them. It was gold, with a dragon on one face and a king on the other.

“The golden dragon of Westeros,” said the kindly man. “And how did you come by this? We are no thieves.”

“It wasn’t stealing. I took one of his, but I left him one of ours.”

The kindly man understood. “And with that coin and the others in his purse, he paid a certain man. Soon after that man’s heart gave out. Is that the way of it? Very sad.” The priest picked up the coin and tossed it into the pool.

After this, she is given back her own face as well as the half-black and half-white robe of the Faceless Men acolytes, which she has to wear every time she has to stay at the House of Black and White. This isn’t the only new thing the Kindly Man gives her, though, for at the same time he informs her that there is a new assignment for her to start the next day: to go to Izembaro to begin an apprenticeship. For this new job, she will have to wear a new face, her second, and the opposite of the one that she just wore: a face as pretty as the face of Arya Stark, who gives back the usual reply that she’s no one.

[Milady of York]

Analysis

The name is No One, of House Stark

GRRM seems to follow a certain pattern with the Stark children that are forced due to circumstances or by their own choice to adopt other identities and evolve rather quickly: he buries in their chapters numerous subtle and not so subtle reminders of/connections to their true identity or to their place of birth, in some cases to the point that the more far away they are from Winterfell and the more distanced they are from their Stark selves, the more does the author try and link them to these things. We’ve seen that in the elder Stark girl’s chapters in the previous book, and so we see it in Arya’s other chapters from AFFC to this book that no longer have her name in the heading. No One still struggles with memories and feelings that are part of her true identity, which emerge all across this chapter:

• When she’s asked to stay to talk with the FM afflicted with plague, she “seated herself in a weirwood chair with a face of ebony,” and not in one of ebony with a face of weirwood, a very subtle reminder that she’s a Stark, and though Arya sits in this weirwood chair unconsciously, the priest seems to have noticed this.
  
• The same man is disbelieving that she is No One, and tells her she’s Arya of House Stark, who bites her lip and is a bad liar.
  
• She is told that she has “the eyes of a wolf and a taste for blood.” Either the Faceless Men suspect Arya of having warging abilities, or this priest is just referring to what her expression and body language reveal: the hungry look of someone with a still much alive desire for revenge, which is the most probable interpretation given what he tells her after this (“You would kill for your own purposes, for your own pleasures.”).
  
• Immediately after the above comment by the priest, she recites the death list of Arya Stark mentally.
  
• After learning of the price to pay to be a Faceless Woman, she thinks of the many names Arya Stark has had: “Arry, Weasel, Squab, Cat of the Canals. She thought of that stupid girl from Winterfell called Arya Horseface.”
  
• When she first meets the man she must kill, she finds it unfair that he’s lived more than “her father,” Lord Eddard, and then tries to suppress the thought reminding herself that she has no father.
  
• She still works hard to get rid of the habit of biting her lip, and once before the changing of faces, she bits it whilst considering, as Arya Stark, the options the Kindly Man has given her. In the same scene, when she sees the faces hanging on the walls, she tells herself that a wolf isn’t afraid of skins; in other words, she finds courage in being “the night wolf,” warging Nymeria.
  
• During the face-changing process, she’s given something to drink that was “very tart, like biting into a lemon.” Which reminds her of “a girl who loved lemon cakes,” i.e. her sister Sansa, but she again stifles the flashback.
  
• She has bad dreams in which she sees the faces of Lord Eddard, Lady Catelyn, Robb, Brandon and Rickon. She leaves out Jon Snow, whom she knows to be alive, and curiously Sansa as well. Once more, Arya struggles to talk herself into believing that she has no family.
  
• In the same nightmare appear the men she killed as Arya: Dareon, the stableboy, the Harrenhal guard, the squire and the Tickler. The latter being one of her most traumatic experiences in the Riverlands.
  
• The day of the killing, the first thing the Ugly Girl does as she goes out to fulfil her assignment is recite Arya Stark’s death list, for the second time in this chapter, and in silence so nobody can hear her.
  

Manipulators-R-Us

The motives the Faceless Men could have for their offering Arya a choice to be sent away range from outright psychological manipulation, testing her commitment to their institution to genuine offers of a way out, with good arguments for backing up each explanation. However, leaving aside explanations concerning the reasons and goals behind these actions for a moment, let’s look only at the phrasing of these offers, the bolded parts in particular:

“You were a cat, they tell me. Prowling through the alleys smelling of fish, selling cockles and mussels for coin. A small life, well suited for a small creature such as you. Ask, and it can be restored to you. Push your barrow, cry your cockles, be content.

Your heart is too soft to be one of us.”

He means to send me away.

“I have no heart. I only have a hole. I’ve killed lots of people.

I could kill you if I wanted.”

…

“Valar dohaeris.”

All men must serve.

“

You know the words, but you are too proud to serve.

A servant must be humble and obedient.”

“I obey

. I can be humbler than anyone

.”

That made him chuckle. “You will be the very goddess of humility, I am sure.

But can you pay the price?

”

“What price?”

“The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. […] Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.” […]

“

I can pay the price. Give me a face.

”

“

Faces must be earned.

”

“

Tell me how.

”

“

Give a certain man a certain gift. Can you do that?

”

“What man?”

“No one that you know […].

Will you kill him?

”

“Yes.”

And then, let’s strip these lines bare and observe the pattern:

FM: You’re too soft.

ARYA: Am not! I am a heartless killer, I can kill you.

FM: You’re too independent and proud.

ARYA: Am not! I am obedient and can be humbler than you all.

FM: There’s a price to pay I am thinking you could not pay.

ARYA: Could too! Tell me what it is.

FM: All you are and have, and all you will. Nothing will be yours, not even your face.

ARYA: Can pay too, give me the face.

FM: You haven’t earned it.

ARYA: Can earn it too!

FM: Fine, kill this man…

Then it becomes apparent that they’re using an old emotional manipulation technique known to psychologists as Covert Intimidation and to schoolchildren the world over as “I dare you to…” It’s quite simple and effective, and usually consists of subtle threats, shaming and inducing self-doubt so as to elicit the desired response, physical or verbal. The procedure is for the manipulator to tell the manipulated individual something that undermines, minimises or questions his/her abilities, courage, fitness, achievements, self-reliance, self-image, or perceptions, so the person is driven onto the defensive and feels the need to behave, say or do something that disproves the manipulator’s assertions.

Assuming that the FM are manipulating Arya and not just testing if she’s ready for the next stage and fully committed to her training, then this is the technique used by Plague Face (and the Kindly Man later): he calls her soft-hearted, disobedient and proud, which Arya has to deny out of fear of being sent away because she’s “unsuitable” to be one of them, which hits her directly in her vulnerable point: her self-worth (which is the trademark of the technique cited), since she sees herself as perfectly capable and hates the thought of being weak and defenceless again; and through this method, they get her to agree to pay the price, and to kill.

The Kindly Man again uses the technique later, when she comes back from her first day of observing her future victim. This time he scolds her for asking questions about the man, something that No One shouldn’t do, and then tells her that if she can’t do the killing, then she should say it, for it’s no shame… But then goes on to tell her that some are suited to serve the Many-Faced God and others aren’t, once more hitting the target because Arya’s convinced she can do this and had already given her word that she would. The third time, the Kindly Man hits the mark by appealing to a negative emotion Arya doesn’t want to experience again:

“

Do they frighten you, child?

” asked the kindly man. “It is not too late for you to leave us. Is this truly what you want?”

As can be seen, he’s subtly implying that if this is too frightening for her, then she can leave; but Arya doesn’t see herself as a frightened little girl anymore since she’s killed people already, seen many horrors in the Riverlands, washed corpses and embodies Nymeria in the nights. Plus, she has nowhere to go, so she asks him for her face to be changed so she can complete her task. Incidentally, one interesting bit of this technique is that this seems to work better if the assertion to which the manipulated has to respond starts is interrogative/questioning/doubting rather than affirmative: "Will you...?" "Can you...?"

Little sister, big sister and the men with a goatee

The day she has to kill that man, Arya decides to wear ugly clothes that go with the face she’s got:

An ugly girl should dress in ugly clothing, she decided, so she chose a stained

brown cloak

fraying at the hem, a musty

green tunic

smelling of fish, and a pair of

heavy boots

.

Now, observe the colours of the clothing Sansa put on the day she escapes from King’s Landing:

She had no blacks, so she chose a

dress of thick brown wool

. The bodice was decorated with freshwater pearls, though.

The cloak will cover them.

The cloak was a deep green

, with a large hood. She slipped the dress over her head, and donned the cloak, though she left the hood down for the moment. There were

shoes as well, simple and sturdy,

with flat heels and square toes.

So, Arya is wearing a green tunic with a brown cloak and heavy shoes, and Sansa had been wearing a brown dress with a green cloak and sturdy shoes. This isn’t the only parallel to be found; note the description of Arya’s victim: an old man with grey hair and a still black little pointed beard he has the habit of scratching, which is reminiscent of another man who also “counted coins” and who took Sansa away that night: Littlefinger’s description includes having gray hair at the temples and a little pointed beard he constantly strokes. So this might be pointing to a similar end for him.

An assassin needs motives… not.

Despite the lectures she’s been receiving on the neutrality of the Faceless Men and on dispassionate killing, not judging those they must kill as Goodies and Baddies, on neither liking nor hating them, etc., when Arya has to give the gift for the first time, she still struggles with her own need to have a motive to kill that man, and she therefore engages in self-talk that reads like she’s aiming at convincing herself that there are reasons why this man should die, reasons that aren’t just that the Many-Faced God has agreed to his death independently of whether he deserves it or not.

She starts by finding flaws in the man, the first one being something that isn’t even one in itself, and that is a reaction of hurt mixed with thoughts of how unjust her father’s death was:

He was an old man, well past fifty.

He has lived too long,

she tried to tell herself.

Why should he have so many years when my father had so few?

Then she registers real character flaws in the man when he fails to respond to her smiling and instead splashes dirty water on her:

He has no courtesy,

she thought, watching him go.

His face is hard and mean

.

Arya isn’t someone that holds courtesy in high regard as her sister did, but this inconsiderate behaviour on the part of the man did indicate to her an unpleasant nature that reflected on his face. Plus, he was ugly and hunchbacked. She therefore pronounces her judgment:

“He is an evil man,” she announced that evening when she returned to the House of Black and White. “His lips are cruel, his eyes are mean, and he has a villain’s beard.”

This earns her another lecture on neutrality, but she wants to know if at least the gods have judged him, and is again told that only some gods perhaps, because theirs is also a distant and dispassionate god that doesn’t weigh men’s souls, just dispenses death. Even so, Arya still searches for things to not like about the man, and finds something to hate in his constantly moving hands:

“He moves his hands too much,” she told them at the temple. “He must be full of fear. The gift will bring him peace.”

But the Kindly Man tells her the gift brings peace to all men, guilty and innocent, good and bad, and that the victim shouldn’t even notice who killed him. Arya continues her observation of the man, and once she figures out what his trade is, she also thinks that one of his clients:

… must hate him. One of them came to the House of Black and White and prayed for the god to take him.

And expresses a wish to know who that person was, which runs contrary to the Faceless Men's philosophy, and reveals that it’s still not that easy for her to embrace it, that it clashes with her own ideas of justice, her core self, and that’s why she must resort to devaluing the victim to be able to perform this task. The impression that she still thinks fairness shouldn’t be out of the equation when giving the gift is further reinforced by her inner monologue when she’s given the face of a beaten girl and she thinks the Kindly Man should have killed the abusive father.

[Lala]

Thank you for the amazing analysis! I just want to point out something that jumped out at me:

“You were a cat, they tell me. Prowling through the alleys smelling of fish, selling cockles and mussels for coin. A small life, well suited for a small creature such as you. Ask, and it can be restored to you. Push your barrow, cry your cockles, be content.

Your heart is too soft to be one of us.”

He means to send me away.

“I have no heart. I only have a hole. I’ve killed lots of people.

I could kill you if I wanted.”

…

“Valar dohaeris.”

All men must serve.

“

You know the words, but you are too proud to serve.

A servant must be humble and obedient.”

“I obey

. I can be humbler than anyone

.”

That made him chuckle. “You will be the very goddess of humility, I am sure.

But can you pay the price?

”

“What price?”

“The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. […] Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.” […]

“

I can pay the price. Give me a face.

”

“

Faces must be earned.

”

“

Tell me how.

”

“

Give a certain man a certain gift. Can you do that?

”

“What man?”

“No one that you know […].

Will you kill him?

”

“Yes.”

This exchange between Arya and the KM almost sounds like a ritualistic dialogue that precedes certain offers of power - i.e. Caesar being offered the crown thrice and turning it down thrice and, if I remember correctly, the conversion process to Judaism, which involves some form of ritualistic "testing" of the convert's resolve.

When I read the conversation, it almost flows as follows:

KM: Your heart is too soft

Arya: I have no heart

KM: You must serve

Arya: I obey

KM: Can you pay the price?

Arya: I can pay the price. Give me a face.

KM: Faces must be earned

Arya: Tell me how (what I must do)

KM: Give a certain man a gift. Can you do that?

Arya: What man?

KM: No one that you know ... Will you kill him?

Arya: Yes

Which leads me to wonder if this is a conversation that each of the FM participate in before they are formally accepted as an acolyte

[Pod The Impaler]

Manipulators-R-Us

(snip)

Then it becomes apparent that they’re using an old emotional manipulation technique known to psychologists as Covert Intimidation and to schoolchildren the world over as “I dare you to…” It’s quite simple and effective, and usually consists of subtle threats, shaming and inducing self-doubt so as to elicit the desired response, physical or verbal. The procedure is for the manipulator to tell the manipulated individual something that undermines, minimises or questions his/her abilities, courage, fitness, achievements, self-reliance, self-image, or perceptions, so the person is driven onto the defensive and feels the need to behave, say or do something that disproves the manipulator’s assertions.

As I recall from earlier, one remark either Catelyn or Eddard makes regarding Arya is that if you forbade oe refused something to her, it became her heart's desire.

It is not that Arya's spoiled or greedy or self-indulgent or covetous, but rather that she is a very determined and wilful person. She does not accept the idea that she cannot do something, that she lacks the capability. This strong urge especially heightened in light of her inabiity to save her father or her mother (after all, in both cases she made attempts to despite the situations being way beyond her capabilities.)

An assassin needs motives… not.

Despite the lectures she’s been receiving on the neutrality of the Faceless Men and on dispassionate killing, not judging those they must kill as Goodies and Baddies, on neither liking nor hating them, etc., when Arya has to give the gift for the first time, she still struggles with her own need to have a motive to kill that man, and she therefore engages in self-talk that reads like she’s aiming at convincing herself that there are reasons why this man should die, reasons that aren’t just that the Many-Faced God has agreed to his death independently of whether he deserves it or not.

And expresses a wish to know who that person was, which runs contrary to the Faceless Men's philosophy, and reveals that it’s still not that easy for her to embrace it, that it clashes with her own ideas of justice, her core self, and that’s why she must resort to devaluing the victim to be able to perform this task. The impression that she still thinks fairness shouldn’t be out of the equation when giving the gift is further reinforced by her inner monologue when she’s given the face of a beaten girl and she thinks the Kindly Man should have killed the abusive father.

In part it is her values that lead to a search for motives, but it is also her mind searching for a way to rationalize what she is about to do. If it bothered her completely, she would refuse the task and be finished with the Faceless Men - but she does not abandon her goal of joining them, nor her mission to kill. The Faceless Men are in their way of selecting and preparing this task for her - they do not want her to rationalize it at all; they want a kill that has nothing "moral" that she could use to justify it.

Arya must face up to the fact she is going to kill someone whom she has no history with, nor any strong justification to hide behind. This is like the Faceless Man's inversion of her father's code of "he who passes the sentence must swing the sword." The similarity with her northern code of honour is this: at the end of the process, if a man is dead, the responsibility is all hers to bear. The inversion comes in that what her father taught her was that she should listen to her conscience, whereas with the Faceless Men, the lesson is that she should not.

[Odon]

He takes her to the third level where only the priests of the Faceless Men can set a foot on, the place where there were “a thousand faces” on the walls,

Does this make Arya the Hero with a Thousand Faces? ;)

[Alberich]

snip...

Thank you for this excellent summary and analysis, Milady of York. Your analysis is wonderfull and the passage about the psychological manipulation is very, very interesting. :eek:

[Elaena Targaryen]

Great job Milady of York! :) I love how there are so many involved with this project so we have such a variety of view points with summary and analysis!

.An assassin needs motives… not.

Despite the lectures she’s been receiving on the neutrality of the Faceless Men and on dispassionate killing, not judging those they must kill as Goodies and Baddies, on neither liking nor hating them, etc., when Arya has to give the gift for the first time, she still struggles with her own need to have a motive to kill that man, and she therefore engages in self-talk that reads like she’s aiming at convincing herself that there are reasons why this man should die, reasons that aren’t just that the Many-Faced God has agreed to his death independently of whether he deserves it or not.

She starts by finding flaws in the man, the first one being something that isn’t even one in itself, and that is a reaction of hurt mixed with thoughts of how unjust her father’s death was:

He was an old man, well past fifty.

He has lived too long,

she tried to tell herself.

Why should he have so many years when my father had so few?

Then she registers real character flaws in the man when he fails to respond to her smiling and instead splashes dirty water on her:

He has no courtesy,

she thought, watching him go.

His face is hard and mean

.

Arya isn’t someone that holds courtesy in high regard as her sister did, but this inconsiderate behaviour on the part of the man did indicate to her an unpleasant nature that reflected on his face. Plus, he was ugly and hunchbacked. She therefore pronounces her judgment:

“He is an evil man,” she announced that evening when she returned to the House of Black and White. “His lips are cruel, his eyes are mean, and he has a villain’s beard.”

This earns her another lecture on neutrality, but she wants to know if at least the gods have judged him, and is again told that only some gods perhaps, because theirs is also a distant and dispassionate god that doesn’t weigh men’s souls, just dispenses death. Even so, Arya still searches for things to not like about the man, and finds something to hate in his constantly moving hands:

“He moves his hands too much,” she told them at the temple. “He must be full of fear. The gift will bring him peace.”

But the Kindly Man tells her the gift brings peace to all men, guilty and innocent, good and bad, and that the victim shouldn’t even notice who killed him. Arya continues her observation of the man, and once she figures out what his trade is, she also thinks that one of his clients:

… must hate him. One of them came to the House of Black and White and prayed for the god to take him.

And expresses a wish to know who that person was, which runs contrary to the Faceless Men's philosophy, and reveals that it’s still not that easy for her to embrace it, that it clashes with her own ideas of justice, her core self, and that’s why she must resort to devaluing the victim to be able to perform this task. The impression that she still thinks fairness shouldn’t be out of the equation when giving the gift is further reinforced by her inner monologue when she’s given the face of a beaten girl and she thinks the Kindly Man should have killed the abusive father.

I agree that Arya struggles with the need for a motive to kill the insurance man and I've had to argue this point in the past. The way she tries so hard to find a reason, to make her feel more comfortable with the choice she has made, I could find it endearing if it involved anything else other than murder.

But I think this was when I decided beyond a doubt that the Faceless Men / Kindly Man are not what they claim to be. I feel that in the end the Kindly Man did provide Arya with the motive she desperately needed to kill the insurance man, and that goes against everything they preach to her, so I believe he is manipulating her here as well.

After Arya first observes the target and returns to the temple she tells the Kindly Man that the target is evil and he laughs and says...

• The kindly man chuckled. “He is a man like any other, with light in him and darkness. It is not for you to judge him.”
  

Arya asks if the gods have judged the target and the Kindly Man responds...

• “Some gods, mayhaps. What are gods for if not to sit in judgment over men? The Many-Faced God does not weigh men’s souls, however. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the good would live forever.”
  

So far so good and inline with the Faceless Man philosophy - 'He is a man like any other and it's nor for you or me to judge him'. Then Arya says when I give the target the gift it will bring him peace and the Kindly Man says

• “The gift brings all men peace.”
  

Then Arya says when I kill the target he will thank me but the Kindly Man says

• “If he does, you will have failed. It would be best if he takes no note of you at all.”
  

We are still on track but then Arya changes her tactic to ask what exactly does the targets business involve and the Kindly Man starts answering personal questions about the insurance man. But when plague face first brought this assignment to Arya he told her

• “He is one of them. A stranger. No one you love, no one you hate, no one you have ever known. Will you kill him?”
  

It is supposed to be dispassionate so why does the Kindly Man keep answering Arya's questions? Arya should not know this information and she does not need all of this knowledge to complete her task so why does he tell her? I don't believe Arya outwitted the Kindly Man here and I feel he knew precisely what he was doing so why does he do it?

Instead of evading Arya's questions, like he usually would with 'he is a man like any other that we should not judge', the Kindly Man answers five of Arya's questions in detail. I feel he even coaxes her into inquiring more by providing detail about the insurance man's character in the first response and then the final replies grow more elaborate or appear baiting. This is even where readers get the nickname the 'insurance man' for Arya's first professional kill.

The Kindly Man's last reply finally provides Arya the motive she desperately needs to accomplish her mission and earn her a place with the Faceless Men and he tells her how the insurance man's wager works... Also for someone that has mastered his facial expressions why did a sad smile touch his lips right before the Kindly Man implies the insurance man is dishonorable?

• “… they lose their ships, oftimes their very lives. The seas are dangerous, and never more so than in autumn. No doubt many a captain sinking in a storm has taken some small solace in his binder back in Braavos, knowing that his widow and children will not want.” A sad smile touched his lips. “It is one thing to write such a binder, though, and another to make good on it.”
  

Then Arya's first thought is Cat [she] understood... what does Arya understand? Arya understands the Kindly Man explains to her why and how this man was chosen.

The insurance man did not make good on a binder and left some family desolate. Someone was so devastated by the insurance man's greed that they gave an enormous sacrifice to have him killed, maybe even their own life. It's their responsibility now to bring solace to this family in the last way available to them, if anyone is even alive at this point, because the sacrifice was made.

These are all things Arya should not have learned before her assignment was completed, and maybe not even after, according to their religious doctrine. "The Many-Faced God does not weigh men’s souls. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the good would live forever.” Why does the Kindly Man give Arya the motive to kill the man?

[Fire Eater]

Does this make Arya the Hero with a Thousand Faces? ;)

Nice one, so this would be seen as apotheosis, especially with the underworld inference of the chamber.

[Alberich]

Exzellent post, Elaena Targaryen. :)

Indeed the Kindly Old Man gives Arya the perfectly motivation. To use the defencelessness of widows and orphans to deny them the insurance money is indefensible for Arya’s sense of justice. And so she finds the self-justification, which makes it possible for her to murder the insurance man.

ASoIaF is not real medieval, but the society in ASoIaF has a fundamental medieval moral. Real (European) medieval moral based on the bible primary, so I think it is useful to look in the bible here, in Exodus 21-24:

“²¹ You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. ²²You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. ²³If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; ²⁴my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.”

That’s hefty, isn’t it? Arya as the sword of God! :idea: Well, not so much the sword (that sticks with the pointed end) than the giver of the poisoned coin. But – and here we come back to Essos – the Many Faced God is not the biblical God and knows no wrath, or does he? Elaena has pointed out the difference between the theological beliefs of the Faceless Men and the way the Kindly Old Man manipulate Arya. So what do the Faceless Men believe really?

Edited: get away some Smileys - it was a little bit Smiley overkill!

[Ragnorak]

Wonderful job, Milday! A pleasure to read as always.

Random Observations

“This will hurt,” he warned her, “but pain is the price of power."

We've seen much surrounding powers and shadows most explicitly stated in the riddle from Varys. To the best of my recollection only Mel mentions power and pain and it is in the specific context of magic.

“When I kill him he will look in my eyes and thank me.”

This is very First Men justice. We see Karstark look Robb in the eyes and thank him at the beheading scene.

Eleven servants of the Many-Faced God gathered that night beneath the temple

One short of a jury of twelve. Justice commentary?

Beyond were still more steps, hewn out of solid rock.

The original Faceless Men were miners. Are they the ones that carved these tunnels?

Is it just me or did the descriptions of these underground sanctuaries remind anyone else of the Winterfell Crypts?

The Rules?

“Are you some butcher of the battlefield, hacking down every man who stands in your way?”

“No.”

“I would hope not. You are a servant of the Many-Faced God, and we who serve Him of Many Faces give his gift only to those who have been marked and chosen.”

There's still much vagueness surrounding the rules the Faceless Men operate under based on the differences between what Arya is told and what we them actually do. Marked and chosen struck me as potentially having some meaning that might help clarify some of this especially with regard to Pate. Pate is manipulated not unlike Arya is here and like Arya it seems important that he make his own choice.

Milady had a very nice catch with the similarities in Sansa and Arya's clothing as well as the parallels to LF in Arya's victim. Both Sansa and Arya have overheard vital information-- Sansa with Lysa before she leaves by the Moon Door and Arya hearing Varys and Illyrio back in GoT. We even have a bit of a reminder of that chapter with the eyeless watching

“It’s dead,” she said aloud. “It’s just a skull, it can’t hurt me.” Yet somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her.

As they made their way back to the steps, the empty eyeholes of the skins upon the walls seemed to follow her. For a moment she could almost see their lips moving, whispering dark sweet secrets to one another in words too faint to hear.

Part of Arya's training here is preparing her to see through the lies of a man like Varys and piece together things like his schemes. Certain answers she gets from the Kindly Man are reminiscent of Varys and his evasiveness.

“Did you kill him?”

“She asked the gift for herself, not for her father.”

This is not an answer to whether of not he was killed by the Faceless Men though it implies that information. These types of answers are Varys MO. Arya has also been trained to be precise in her knowledge and to distinguish it from assumptions like we saw earlier with the "some drunken men claim" distinction on the next Sealord.

Jaqen's mission at the Citadel may be thematically tied to Arya's eventual piecing together the conversation she overheard back in GoT. It is hard to say without a better understanding of the rules and his exact mission. The Sansa parallel with the clothing and LF similarities in Arya's target make me think of the conversations they each overheard. Is Arya destined to take down Varys/Illyrio in a similar way to Sansa seeming to be destined to take down LF?

The foreshadowing notion that the fat man might represent Illyrio and the plague victim Jon Connington occurred to me but I can't find a coherent way to put it together.

I would feel better speculating if I understood the underlying rules better. Is Brusco a FM dropout? If Arya leaves will she be asked or told to provide a similar service or is she beyond the point of leaving after this chapter?

Magic

The way these faces seem to remember the past lives struck me as fairly similar to the warging second life. Arya even refers to the faces as skins making this act of face changing one that could also be called skinchanging.

For a moment she could almost see their lips moving, whispering dark sweet secrets to one another in words too faint to hear.

Is this normal for a first time new face or is this because Arya is already a skinchanger? The Kindly Man tells her that she may have nightmares for a time which seems to be related to the memories of the girl whose face she has taken. Arya does have a nightmare but it has nothing to do with the girl's memories but rather her own.

Bran's vision, with what seems like a human sacrifice, has led to speculation that blood magic is involved in waking the weirwood trees. Is there a parallel between "awakening" the face on the weirwood and the face Arya's dons here?

There's also the speculation that the Bolton's were trying to become skinchangers by flaying the Starks and wearing their skins. This scene has a very similar feel to that concept. More specifically we have Theon and Ramsay where we see another type of becoming No One through losing one's identity where the cost is all of you. If Ramsay took Theon's eyes it would be a rather different process than Arya's loss of sight but the identity crisis and the threat of "taking" have certain similarities. Theon's own struggle surrounding the identity of Arya Stark adds layers to the parallels.

Mummers change their faces with artifice,” the kindly man was saying, “and sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye. These arts you shall learn, but what we do here goes deeper. Wise men can see through artifice, and glamors dissolve before sharp eyes, but the face you are about to don will be as true and solid as that face you were born with.

There are hints here about seeing through the illusions cast by the likes of Varys and Mel. As Arya goes out she notes that she thinks the seal recognizes her and in the past the cats knew her despite her change to Blind Beth. Arya already used to her warging ability to identify the Kindly Man as the one who was attacking her. Is this setting up Arya's ability to see through FM identities later?

Bloodraven

In past chapters there have been references that seem to clearly point to Bloodraven and his 1000 eyes watching Arya (and the other Stark children as well.)

A thousand faces were gazing down on her.

This seems to be one of those Bloodraven references. The wind is another potential old god symbol and we've seen it tug at Arya's cloak before.

Instead she perched atop a wooden piling twenty yards away as the blustery wind tugged at her cloak with ghostly fingers.

The ghostly fingers could represent the family she thinks dead pulling at the cloak, a symbol of her Stark identity. In Jon especially, we see the weather as a character seeming to have a mind of its own. Here Arya doesn't get the all too common fog she wishes for. Is this representative of Bloodraven trying to call her home or steer her away from this path? Is he connected to her dreaming about herself as a killer instead of the past experiences of the face she's wearing?

UnCat

One thing we see in this chapter is Arya thinking of herself as merely "Cat" rather than the whole identity of Cat of the Canals. I think this is a first but I may be wrong.

“The gift brings all men peace.”

But death brought no such peace for Catelyn Stark. Arya is flirting with being consumed with vengeance in a somewhat similar fashion to her undead mother. The House of Black and White can't look kindly on either the Others bringing wights back from the dead or the Red God and his fire filled vengeance zombies. The wind also tugs at a Red Priest's robes

A red priest swept past, his scarlet and crimson robes snapping in the wind.

and I can't help but wonder if there is a connection to Cat's resurrection either directly as the ghost whose fingers pull at Arya's cloak or simply thematically as the revenant who knows no peace in death.

[Lala]

Interesting comment on Arya taking down Varys/Illyrio - there would be a certain nice parallelism between the arcs of the two sisters if this were the case. In a certain sense, V/I are playing a "mummer's game" still, and, as a FM, Arya would essentially be defeating them at their "own game." Similar to how Sansa is expected to defeat LF at his "own game" of cyvasse pieces on the board.